“(Reuters) – When Yang Xiuzhu got wind in 2003 that Chinese anti-corruption investigators were looking into her affairs, she boarded a flight to Singapore. A few days later Yang changed her name and flew to New York.

China filed an arrest warrant through Interpol for Yang, a senior official who oversaw construction projects in the booming eastern province of Zhejiang. She was eventually detained in Amsterdam in 2005, but nearly a decade on, China has yet to get her back despite protracted negotiations with the Netherlands.

Yang’s case and others like it underscore the challenge for President Xi Jinping as he expands his already far-reaching anti-corruption campaign to tracking down suspects who have fled abroad, often taking their ill-gotten gains with them.

State media has been using the latest prong to Xi’s crackdown – dubbed the “fox hunt” by the Ministry of Public Security in July – to warn officials about absconding.

But while China has extradition treaties with 38 countries, it doesn’t have one with the Netherlands, or with the United States, Canada and Australia – the three most popular destinations for suspected economic criminals, according to state media.

Adding to the allure of those three countries for corrupt officials is suspicion there of Chinese law enforcement, said Chinese legal experts, along with the quality of life, world-class educational facilities and large ethnic Chinese communities.

Indeed, Western governments have long been reluctant to hand over Chinese suspects because the ruling Communist Party controls China’s courts and torture can be used to extract confessions, the experts said. Capital punishment is also widely meted out, including for corruption.

“There are differences in our political systems as well as ideological differences,” said Lin Xin, a researcher who specializes in international law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

“These differences will affect extradition.”

Earlier this month, Chinese officials said more than 150 “economic fugitives”, many of them corrupt officials, were in the United States. The government has given no recent overall figure for the number at large around the world.

Interpol has arrest warrants for 69 Chinese wanted on charges of corruption, embezzlement, fraud and bribery, according to a Reuters analysis of its public database.

Beijing has also grappled with so-called “naked officials” – government workers whose family members are overseas – and who use those connections to illegally shift assets out of China.

The sums of money believed to have been spirited out from all types of malfeasance are staggering. The Washington-based Global Financial Integrity group, a non-profit organization that analyses illicit financial flows, estimates that about $2.83 trillion flowed illegally out of China from 2005 to 2011.

Neither the Ministry of Public Security nor the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s anti-graft watchdog, responded to requests for comment.

“FOX HUNT” GATHERING PACE?

China has extradited 730 people suspected of major economic crimes from dozens of countries since 2008, the official Xinhua news agency said in July. In a sign the “fox hunt” might be picking up, 18 have surrendered or been extradited in the past month from places such as Cambodia, Indonesia and Uganda, Xinhua said.

But very few return from Western countries, said Liao Ran, a senior program coordinator of the Asia and Pacific department at Transparency International, a Berlin-based international corruption watchdog.

The most prominent is Lai Changxing, once China’s most-wanted fugitive, who fled to Canada with his family in 1999 and claimed refugee status after saying allegations that he ran a multi-billion-dollar smuggling operation in the southeastern city of Xiamen were politically motivated.

After a Canadian court rejected Lai’s application for refugee status, dismissing concerns he could be tortured or executed if sent home, Lai was deported, but not extradited, in 2011. He was jailed for life the following year.

David Matas, a lawyer who represented Lai in his refugee claim proceedings, said the case took so long because Canadian courts wanted to examine assurances from China that it would not execute or torture Lai.

Despite China’s promises, Lai was skeptical since his brother and accountant had both died in jail, Matas said, adding the circumstances of their deaths were never fully explained.

“He was worried something like that could happen to him,” Matas said by telephone from Winnipeg.

Chinese state media reported in 2009 that Lai’s elder brother, Lai Shuiqiang, had died in prison in 2002 “after he suddenly fell ill”. There were no articles about the accountant.

Prison officials did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. TALKS

To help return fugitives in the United States, the Ministry of Public Security is trying to set up annual high-level meetings with U.S. authorities, the China Daily said on Aug. 11.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said agency officials would meet Chinese counterparts in Beijing in December through the U.S.-China Joint Liaison Group on Law Enforcement Cooperation, adding the department regularly discusses law enforcement issues with China, including fugitives in both countries.

The spokesman, Peter Carr, said both sides have occasionally returned fugitives when they were also subject to deportation under immigration laws, but declined to give specific examples.

In Canada, officials at various ministries including the Justice Ministry declined to comment on whether Chinese anti-graft investigators were in the country or planned to visit.

In July 2013, the two governments concluded talks on a deal on sharing forfeited assets and the return of property. The agreement will not come into force until both sides ratify it. A Justice Ministry spokeswoman said she was not aware of Chinese officials in Canada trying to regain the proceeds of crime from corruption back home.

The Australian Attorney General’s office said it was a long-standing practice not to confirm or deny if requests for assistance had come from foreign countries in investigations.

PROPERTY DEVELOPERS

Yang Xiuzhu worked her way up the ranks to become a deputy director of the construction bureau in Zhejiang province, according to Nanfengchuang, a magazine owned by the state-run Guangzhou Daily.

Local authorities said in 2004 she accepted kickbacks from property developers of more than 250 million yuan ($40.62 million), Xinhua has reported.

She was arrested in 2005 upon her arrival in the Netherlands, where Chinese anti-corruption and legal experts believe she remains. It was unclear why Yang flew there or whether she has a lawyer.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said it would not comment on individual cases, although Dutch officials said there was no pending extradition request from China.

As recently as 2011, Xinhua reported that “the Chinese government is actively handling the extradition formalities” involving Yang.

STOLEN ASSETS

Recovering stolen assets might be easier for China as most nations want to stem the flow of corrupt money across borders, legal experts said, although some sums returned so far are paltry.

Australia for example has repatriated A$7.5 million to China since 2002 from embezzlement, fraud and money laundering, the Attorney General’s department said.

“I think the U.S. is very, very serious about trying to trace and locate ill-gotten assets of politicos of any state who will seek to have the money returned,” said Douglas McNabb, a D.C.-based veteran extradition lawyer.

Legal experts said China’s best option for getting stolen assets would be through the U.N. Convention Against Corruption which obliges countries that have ratified it to cooperate.

The work could be time-consuming.

One example is a $3 million villa in the French Riviera that was a key piece of evidence in the corruption trial of Bo Xilai, the former high-flying Chinese politician who was sentenced to life in prison in 2013.

The Chinese court said it would seize the villa, which prosecutors say was given to Bo and his wife by a businessman friend. One year later, it’s unclear if talks have progressed, or even started. The court did not respond to a request for comment.

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

“Although Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has multiple U.S. criminal indictments pending against him, Washington seems to have given up on the possibility of his extradition. Six months after his extraordinary arrest in Mexico on February 22, the world’s most powerful drug kingpin has not been tried in Mexico or the U.S.

Soon after Guzmán was captured at a condominium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlán, in his home state of Sinaloa, a public brawl broke out in the U.S. over which jurisdiction would try him first. Guzmán—who was once considered by Forbes “the biggest drug lord of all times” – has been indicted in Arizona, California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Florida. Prosecutors and law-enforcement officials in New York and Illinois argued that they had the strongest case against him.

In 2013, the Chicago Crime Commission named Guzmán “Public Enemy Number One.” As head of the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization and the #1 supplier of illegal drugs to the U.S., Guzmán controlled the cocaine distribution market in Chicago.

Yet since the day of his arrest, the Mexican government said it has no intention of extraditing Guzmán, even though many Mexicans have expressed doubts through social media about Mexico’s fragile justice system’s ability to prosecute him and keep him in jail. In 2001, Guzmán bribed his way out of a Mexican top-security prison and remained at large for thirteen years by putting hundreds of law-enforcement and military officers on his payroll. Due to the levels of endemic corruption in Mexico’s law-enforcement and political institutions, nothing guarantees that Guzmán cannot buy his freedom again.

In April, upset about a controversial plea bargain with one of Guzmán’s lieutenants in a U.S. federal court in Illinois, Mexico’s Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam reaffirmed Mexico’s unwillingness to extradite Guzmán. The Mexican government’s opposition could have influenced Washington’s decision to withhold the request to bring El Chapo to the U.S. for the time being.

Guzmán is currently behind bars in Mexico’s famous maximum security prison Altiplano, in Almoloya de Juárez, located in Mexico City’s neighboring State of Mexico. In the six months since his arrest, Guzmán’s Mexican defense lawyers have been busy filing numerous injunctions to prevent him from being transferred to another prison or extradited. Last month, they filed injunctions against 17 Mexican government agencies, including the Ministry of Government (Gobernación) and the Foreign Ministry, and 15 top prisons. All were rejected by the courts after the agencies denied plans to transfer him or to extradite him to the U.S.

An earlier injunction against any extradition was also rejected on the basis that no request by the U.S. government exists. El Chapo’s worst nightmare is to face the U.S. system of justice where he would have no way out.

Even in jail, El Chapo has exerted his power and shown his leadership qualities. Last month, according to Proceso, Mexico’s leading weekly, El Chapo, or prisoner No. 3578, led a massive hunger strike to demand better treatment.

In coordination with Édgar Valdez Villarreal, a.k.a. La Barbie, a former Sinaloa Cartel drug lord who is also wanted by the U.S., 1,000 inmates (two thirds of the prison population) were recruited to join the hunger strike, which began on July 16 and ended four days later after prison authorities met most of their demands.

The protest had to do with bad food (more than 20 inmates were poisoned by eating spoiled chicken), inadequate healthcare and lack of medications. They also complained of not being given underwear, irregular compliance with family visits and the limiting of telephone calls to one attempt every nine days. Prisoners also asked for a communal 9 inchTV set, as permitted by the prison regulations.

Although Guzmán-who Proceso’s sources described as a well-mannered man with well-cared-for complexion-and Valdez, are being held in a maximum security area known as Special Treatments, where prisoners supposedly cannot communicate with each other, El Chapo and La Barbie were able to lead a successful strike. This shows not only that El Chapo still has power, but he also knows how to use it.

Since 2009, El Chapo has been included in Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful People list. In 2013, he was dropped from Forbes World’s Billionaire List.”

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

He said he understood from Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson he would be “leaving the embassy” after two years’ refuge but gave no more details.

Mr Assange is wanted for questioning over alleged sex assaults in Sweden and faces arrest if he leaves the embassy.

Mr Hrafnsson later said the plan “as always” was for Mr Assange to depart when the UK “calls off the siege”.

“The world is not coming to an end,” Mr Hrafnsson told reporters inside the embassy.

The plan, as always, is to leave as soon as the UK government decides to honour its obligations in relation to international agreements”

Mr Assange, 43, faces questioning by prosecutors in Stockholm over claims made by two women in 2010. He denies the allegations and sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in June 2012 shortly after the UK’s Supreme Court dismissed his efforts to block his extradition.

Since then police have maintained a round-the-clock presence outside the building, in London’s Knightsbridge, at a cost of £6.4m.

Clive Coleman, the BBC’s legal correspondent, said that nothing had changed since 2012 and Mr Assange would be arrested and extradited if he left the embassy.

Speaking at the news conference, Mr Assange said: “I understand that Kristinn Hrafnsson has said that he can confirm I am leaving the embassy soon”.

But he added it was not because he needed medical treatment, as had been reported in some of the UK press.

This was certainly a news conference of mixed messages. Expectations of a news-making announcement were high as a group of a dozen journalists filed into the Ecuadorean embassy.

They were further fuelled by the fact that we were asked to hand over our mobile phones before entering the embassy, something which had not been the case during a similar news conference held in June to mark the two-year anniversary since Julian Assange first sought refuge.

Mr Assange used this occasion to dispel “misinformation” and to make the point that he has never been charged with any offence either here or in Sweden.

But challenged by journalists to confirm or deny rumours he would leave the embassy soon, he gave a cryptic answer, quoting Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Asked by journalists to clarify his answer, he just said: “I think I’ve said enough”.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on the other hand seemed to suggest Mr Assange would be in the embassy for a long time. He asked how long the Swedish judiciary could allow this situation to continue: “Five more years? Ten more years?” and lamented that there had been “no movement” since Mr Assange entered the embassy in June 2012.

Bound to fail’

Mr Assange says he fears he could eventually be handed over to the US because Wikileaks published classified US military documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars.

But UK courts have repeatedly ruled that he should be sent to Sweden to face questioning.

The UK first ordered his extradition in February 2011. Mr Assange launched a number of appeals, which culminated in the Supreme Court saying the extradition was lawful in 2012.

After that decision, Mr Assange, who had been on conditional bail, sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy.

He was then granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 and the country’s foreign minister Ricardo Patino said he would continue to be offered “protection”.

Sitting next to Mr Patino at a news conference on Monday, Mr Assange said his health had suffered during his time inside the embassy.

Reports in UK newspapers at the weekend said Mr Assange had developed a heart defect and a chronic lung condition during his confinement.

The Australian said the reasons for him leaving were not those “reported by the Murdoch press” – but did not elaborate further.

Our correspondent added that any argument Mr Assange could not be extradited because of his health was “almost certainly bound to fail” because Sweden has a good healthcare system.

Better climate’

Mr Patino said the Ecuadorean government would attempt to meet Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to discuss the case.

He said changes to the UK’s extradition laws had created a better climate for reaching a deal over Mr Assange.

“It is time to free Julian Assange. It is time for his human rights to be finally respected,” Mr Patino added.

A UK Foreign Office spokesman called on the Ecuadorean government to help “bring this difficult and costly situation to an end”.

“We remain as committed as ever to reaching a diplomatic solution to this situation.

“We are clear that our laws must be followed and Mr Assange should be extradited to Sweden,” the spokesman added.”

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

“A British man who spent eight years fighting extradition to the US has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.

Babar Ahmad, 39, from south London, admitted conspiracy and providing material to support to terrorism and faces up to 25 years in jail.

He admitted the offences in a plea agreement hearing in a federal court hearing in New Haven, Connecticut.

A second British man, Syed Talha Ahsan, is also expected to enter related guilty pleas later.

Both men were extradited to the US in October last year. Ahmad’s eight-year battle against extradition was a record for a British citizen and he had thousands of supporters.

Ahmad appeared in the New Haven District Court wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. He did not change two separate pleas of not guilty that he had previously entered to charges of conspiracy to kill and money laundering.

District Judge Janet Hall said she would review Ahmad’s admissions before sentencing on 4 March 2014. The plea agreement means that Ahmad faces a reduced sentence – although the prosecution is still seeking 25 years.

US authorities say that at the heart of the case against both of the men was a website and terrorism support cell network that Ahmad oversaw in London. He was accused of providing logistical and financial support to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan.

In the plea agreement, released by the court, Ahmad states that “he solicited and conspired to provide funds [and] personnel for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan” and that he and others “recruited men to travel to Afghanistan for mujahedeen training and sought out gas masks to send abroad.”

Ahmad launched Azzam publications in the late 1990s as probably the first website promoting jihadist thought in English. It went on to play a pivotal role in propagating the political ideology at a critical point in its development and growth in the West.

The site was shut down within weeks of 9/11 – but in practice much of its content lived on in other forms.

Sajid Badat, a British man who renounced extremism after plotting to blow up a plane, told investigators that he had first been radicalised by Ahmad.

The ringleader of the 7 July London bombers had copies of some of Azzam’s texts on martyrdom – and his will was partly a copy of a document first published on the website.

Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan tried to avoid extradition on the basis that the website’s activities were conducted in the UK, where neither man had been charged or prosecuted for terrorism offences.

But although part of the US case against the men was based on investigations by the Metropolitan Police, the website was technically based in the US and it appealed for support from American and Canadian Muslims.

Ahmad’s campaign to stay in the UK led to more than 100,000 people signing an official government e-petition in an attempt to get a debate in Parliament.

Shortly before he lost his extradition battle, BBC News interviewed him in prison. During that interview, Ahmad denied supporting al-Qaeda inspired terrorism in the West, such as 9/11 and 7/7.

Cageprisoners, a campaign group that supported Babar Ahmad’s battle against extradition, said the plea bargain was “a result of him being stuck within a justice system that offers no way out.”

Moazzam Begg, the group’s outreach director, said: “We must be careful against seeing this as an admission of guilt. Babar had little choice but to make this decision after finding himself amid torturous conditions within the impossible labyrinth of US injustice.

“This episode is a damning indictment of a system that does not rest until it saps its victims´ hope and tramples their dignity underfoot.””

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

WASHINGTON— Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national, has been extradited to the United States to face charges in federal court in the District of Columbia stemming from a conspiracy to carry out a suicide bomb attack against Americans in Europe.

Trabelsi was arrested in Belgium on Sept. 13, 2001, before he carried out the planned attack. After 12 years in custody there, where he served time on Belgian charges, Trabelsi was extradited and transported today to face charges in the United States. Trabelsi was indicted in 2006 by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and a superseding indictment was filed the following year. The charges were unsealed today.

The indictment alleges that Trabelsi personally met in the spring of 2001, with Osama bin Laden to volunteer for a suicide bomb attack against U.S. interests. Preparations unfolded over the next several months, according to the indictment, with Trabelsi allegedly obtaining chemicals in Europe and subsequently joining others to scout a potential target: a military facility that was used by the United States and the United States Air Force.

The charges were announced by Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, John P. Carlin, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Trabelsi, 43, is charged with conspiracy to kill U.S Nationals outside of the United States; conspiracy and attempt to use weapons of mass destruction; conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization; and providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization.

According to the indictment, Trabelsi was residing in Germany in 2000, when he met with other conspirators and made preparations to travel to Afghanistan to train for jihad.

In the spring of 2001, the indictment alleges, he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan, and offered to carry out a suicide bomb attack. According to the indictment, he later spoke with Muhammed Atef, a high-ranking member and chief military planner of al-Qaeda, at bin Laden’s direction. Additionally, the indictment states, he met with others with whom he was to form a cell for the purpose of carrying out a suicide attack.

According to the indictment, Trabelsi and other conspirators discussed various possible targets for a suicide bomb attack and he undertook training in how to place explosives. In June 2001, the indictment states, Trabelsi traveled to Pakistan, where he obtained money from an al-Qaeda associate for use in carrying out his mission. The following month, he rented an apartment in Brussels, Belgium. While in Belgium, Trabelsi bought quantities of chemicals to be used in manufacturing a 1,000-kilogram bomb, the indictment alleges. Additionally, according to the indictment, he traveled at night with conspirators to scout the military base.

The investigation into this matter was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The Department of Justice, Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided significant assistance in this matter. The Department of Justice expressed appreciation to the government of Belgium and the Belgian Federal Police for their assistance. The prosecutors handling the case are Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan M. Malis and Opher Shweiki of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Trial Attorney Mara Kohn of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

If convicted of the charges filed in the indictment, Trabelsi faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has violated a criminal law. All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.”

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

His last appeal was rejected on 23 September by the Belgian Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court.

Justice Minister Annemie Turtelboom was quoted as saying by the Belga news agency that Brussels had received “assurances from US authorities” that he would be tried by a civil court rather than a military tribunal and would not be sentenced to death if convicted.”

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.

“Federal authorities expect that one of the former JPMorgan Chase employees facing criminal charges in connection with the bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss in London will eventually be extradited to the United States, a senior prosecutor said on Tuesday.

The former trader, Javier Martin-Artajo, is living in Spain.

Although Mr. Martin-Artajo appears to be fighting extradition after briefly surrendering to police in Spain in August, Spanish authorities are expected to cooperate with prosecutors in New York.

“We have a pretty good extradition agreement with Spain,” Lorin L. Reisner, the chief of the criminal division at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, said on Tuesday. “I expect,” Mr. Reisner said, that Mr. Martin-Artajo “will return to the U.S. via the extradition process.”

Another former trader charged in the case, Julien Grout, could prove more elusive, Mr. Reisner said. After leaving JPMorgan’s London offices, Mr. Grout returned to his native France, which typically does not extradite its citizens.

“It’s more complicated,” Mr. Reisner said.

Mr. Reisner made his remarks at a conference in Midtown Manhattan on white-collar crime. The conference featured panels with leading government officials and criminal defense lawyers, as well as senior lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which under new leadership has tried to step up its enforcement. Some of those efforts are directed at JPMorgan, the nation’s biggest bank, which is the target of a wider legal crackdown.

The Justice Department is in settlement talks with JPMorgan and is seeking more than $11 billion from the bank over its sale of questionable mortgage securities. The bank also faces lingering investigations into its debt collection practices and its dealings with Bernard L. Madoff, the creator of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

The investigation into JPMorgan’s trading loss in London reached a peak in August when the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, along with the F.B.I., announced charges against the two. At the heart of the case was the contention that the two had deliberately “manipulated and inflated the value” of a derivatives bet to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Both Mr. Martino-Artajo and Mr. Grout deny wrongdoing. Bruno Iksil, a third former trader, known as the “London Whale” for his role in the outsize derivatives trade, reached a nonprosecution deal with the government in exchange for testifying against his former colleagues.

Weeks after the charges, authorities took aim at JPMorgan for “lacking effective internal controls to detect” the traders’ conduct. The civil settlement — which resolved investigations from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the British Financial Services Authority and the S.E.C. — imposed $920 million in penalties on the bank. The deal also required the bank to admit wrongdoing.

At the legal industry conference on Tuesday, the co-head of the S.E.C’s enforcement unit trumpeted JPMorgan’s admission as evidence of a broader policy shift. For decades, the agency permitted defendants to settle cases without acknowledging their misconduct.

“We will demand admissions, and if the defendant isn’t prepared to agree, we will litigate at trial,” said Andrew Ceresney, the S.E.C. official, who gave the keynote address at the conference, run by the Practising Law Institute.

The change has already begun to “bear fruit,” Mr. Ceresney said, citing the JPMorgan case and a settlement with the hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Like a guilty plea in a criminal case, an admission of wrongdoing is important to hold the defendant accountable and provides a form of catharsis to the investing public, he said.

Mr. Ceresney, a former defense lawyer at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, was recused from the JPMorgan case because he once defended the bank. He was hired by the agency’s new chairwoman, Mary Jo White, who also came from Debevoise. Both were federal prosecutors earlier in their careers.

Five months into the S.E.C. job, Mr. Ceresney argued that the new leadership had brought improvements to the agency, which was sharply criticized for missing financial frauds like the Madoff Ponzi scheme and failing to charge any top Wall Street executives tied to the financial crisis. “We wanted to bring the swagger back to the enforcement division, and I think we’re doing that,” he said.

The agency continues to face criticism. Even in the JPMorgan settlement, lawmakers and other critics questioned why the agency had charged the traders but declined to punish the bank’s leadership.

In one sign of change, however, the S.E.C. separately announced on Tuesday that it was paying more than $14 million to a whistle-blower who provided information that led to an enforcement action, by far the most significant payout in the two-year history of its whistle-blower office.

The agency did not identify the tipster or the case this person helped build. But under the whistle-blower program, created under the Dodd-Frank Act, tipsters can reap as much as 30 percent of the money the S.E.C. collects when imposing fines, suggesting that the relevant case was a big one.

The white-collar crime conference coincided with the first day of the government shutdown. Mr. Reisner, the federal prosecutor, described the shutdown as a “complete mess” for his already resource-constrained office.

He said that with 10 criminal trials under way in Federal District Court in Manhattan, he spent much of Monday seeking to prevent the government paralegals working on those cases from being furloughed.”

Douglas McNabb and other members of the U.S. law firm practice and write and/or report extensively on matters involving Federal Criminal Defense, INTERPOL Red Notice Removal, International Extradition Defense, OFAC SDN Sanctions Removal, International Criminal Court Defense, and US Seizure of Non-Resident, Foreign-Owned Assets. Because we have experience dealing with INTERPOL, our firm understands the inter-relationship that INTERPOL’s “Red Notice” brings to this equation.

The author of this blog is Douglas C. McNabb. Please feel free to contact him directly at mcnabb@mcnabbassociates.com or at one of the offices listed above.